Beta: Downloads and Offline Playback

This is all planned.

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I’m having frequent failed downloads on my (fairly old) iPad Mini. Submitted diagnostics.

Can you try submitting diagnostics again? It doesn't look like they went through.

Could you also check if you've run out of disk space? I'm wondering if there's a bug around detecting available disk space.

No problem, I resubmitted and made sure I’m not bumping up against the storage capacity. I’ve been able to download a decent amount but seemingly at random it just errors out. I’ve made sure the screen stays on too.


Next time you get a failure, could you submit diagnostics right after it? We have a new TestFlight beta out that should also give me a little more detail about what's going on.

:+1:

I'm hoping that this functionality will makes its way to streaming (Apple TV, Chromecast w/GTV, Tivo Stream 4K, Nvidia Shield...). Please count this as a vote for it.

Use case:
Second home (Europe) accessing Channels Server in US Limited upstream bandwidth in US limits streaming fidelity and creates pauses. Downloads increase quality and eliminates pauses. Would need storage accessible by the streamer (for me, I've got 32GB available via USB-C.

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There's no plans for adding Downloads to these devices as they do not have the storage necessary for it.

Thanks for the info. I'd like to lobby for it though. With a USB-C hub, it's easy to add a key or SDcard with 32-256GB of storage. With that storage, one could easily download video and play it off it that. Would do wonders to solve viewing problems due to glitchy/limited bandwidth.

This was done in the latest TestFlight beta.

Trash seems to be delayed. I swipe to trash the videos and they do disappear initially. I then go out to the library and back into downloads and they are still there. Then like a minute later they are gone.

Same kind of thing happens when the trash is emptied in the settings section, the videos disappear but then you back out to the settings and it still has the count in the trash setting... but then disappears within a minute.

Not sure if this is on purpose but it seems like a bug in use.

I get why the downloads wait for wifi but i have a very large data allowance and sometimes i really want to download something while i’m not on wifi and especially if i have 4g or 5g coverage this seems like an unnecessary restriction. There’s already a perfectly good ios setting that I could use to turn off mobile data for the channels app if i wanted - why can’t you just use that setting and let people who want to download over cellular do so?

Downloads don't work on cellular right now, not forever. This feature is in beta.

Oh, and thanks for this feature - this has been the major part of my wish list for a long time now. Other than the clock of course :grin: And now that’s arrived i might start a clock-style campaign for the ability to go forward and back in the guide one day at a time which is also completely inexplicable by its absence!

Yeah i get it. Just a suggestion as feedback on the beta, I think it would be better if users could choose whether to download over cellular, and you don’t even need to build the feature because Apple already did it for you!

See above:

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Sure, I’d seen that, thanks. My comment wasn’t in any way a complaint. I figured you’d put this in beta because you wanted feedback. My feedback was that rather than have to figure out a separate strategy to do this you could just use the setting already present in ios and that would come with the advantage of working in the same way this feature works in every other app on my phone. I totally realise this is beta and not everything will be there from day one. Just some feedback you can take or leave as you develop the feature.

Which setting are you referring to?

The mobile data setting isn't really suitable for downloads. First off it defaults to On. So with the default behavior, people would just download things on cellular and eat up their data? And if they didn't want that, they would need to know to go into the iOS settings, and also disable data so then the entire app doesn't work away from home?

Most video apps have their own setting to allow downloads over cellular, and it usually defaults to off.

Settings > Cellular > Channels app

Also, none of that matters. We're limiting ON PURPOSE. We want to make sure the feature doesn't leak in a way to download multiple gigs on someone's data plan.

We know exactly what we're doing and we're doing it on purpose. The ability to download over cellular will be available when the feature is released, it is not released, it is in beta and available early.

When the feature is released, it will work over cellular. Probably before it's released. For now it does not. It'll be fine.

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